The autobiography of Horace Greeley : or, Recollections of a busy life: to which are added miscellaneous essays and papers . sure of atleast two feet fall from his lowest point at flood-time inSpring before he cuts his first drain. Of all unprofitablework, burying tiles where water will run sometimes one way,sometimes the other, until they choke with mud and becomeutterly useless, is most discouraging. But thorough under-draining is the basis of all lasting improvement in farm orgarden culture; and we should either drain our swampsthoroughly, or provide for flooding them in Winter and laythem
The autobiography of Horace Greeley : or, Recollections of a busy life: to which are added miscellaneous essays and papers . sure of atleast two feet fall from his lowest point at flood-time inSpring before he cuts his first drain. Of all unprofitablework, burying tiles where water will run sometimes one way,sometimes the other, until they choke with mud and becomeutterly useless, is most discouraging. But thorough under-draining is the basis of all lasting improvement in farm orgarden culture; and we should either drain our swampsthoroughly, or provide for flooding them in Winter and laythem down to cranberries. I do not doubt that this latteris in many cases the wiser disposition, except where the 308 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE. vicinity of a city or village forbids it, from due regard toothers health. But my swamp is close by a hamlet whichis soon to be quite a village: so it must and shall be drained;and, that thoroughly done, it will be cheap at five hundreddollars per acre, since it needs little hut draining to assimilateit in fertility to a patch of Western prairie. If I live, it shallyet come ;My Barn. My barn is a fair success. I placed it on the shelf of myhill, nearest to the upper (east) side of my place, because abarn-yard is a manufactory of heavy fertilizers from materialsof lesser weight; and it is easier to draw these down hill thanup. I built its walls wholly of stones gathered or blastedfrom the adjacent slope, to the extent of four or five thousandtons, and laid in a box with a thin mortar of (little) lime and(much) sand, filling all the interstices and binding the wholeinto a solid mass, till my walls are nearly one solid rock, MY FARMING. 309 ^yllile the roof is of Vermont slate. I drive into three stories,— a basement for manures, a stable for animals, and a storyabove this for hay — while grain is pitched into the loft or scaffold above, from whose floor the roof rises steep to aheight of sixteen to eighteen feet. There should have
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1870, bookpublishernewyo, bookyear1872
